What Are You Reading?

If booksellers' lists aren't your thing, what about taking an advice (or two) from fellow readers? The elves managed to pull out the records of our bestselling poetry and prose titles of the moment.

Just waiting for a chance, then I’ll try. One of my dreams, you know.”

“Dreams?”

“Dreams to own a place like this with a real garden, where I can grow things, where the children can play in, instead of being cooped up in a flat.”

“Nature is very important, especially for youngsters.” ― Spaces: People / Places by Verena Tay

“Social media junkies like to tweet all these quotes on how we can all choose how we want to live our lives, or some other derivative of your run-of-the-mill motivational bullshit."― The Resident Tourist 9 by Troy Chin

From above, everything in the path of the tsunami looked like it had been whirled in a food blender. Buildings were reduced to either skeletons or shredded rubble. The unforgiving obliteration left roads covered with debris. Nothing would have stood against its wrath and come up intact or even recognizable. On the photograph sits a red dot in an area of badly damaged buildings very close to the coast.

“The red dot is where Suzuya used to be,” explains Yumiko. I understand now why the current hotel we are in looks relatively new. Looking around, I notice the other photos in the lobby: uplifting and cheerful photographs of Yumiko Suzuki and other staff members in candid poses. This is a little bizarre, I think, before I learn that they are part of an initiative with the residents in Onagawa to lift the spirits of the community after the disaster.― I Want To Go Home by Wesley Leon Aroozoo

In this, I catch my daughter’s proxy,a wild-haired imp with two seeds for eyes,moon mouth, hair in a top knotof burnished terracotta,purple tunic and twiggy thighs.She is small-sized amidst the giants,the bonsai palm, the lemon star,leaping without shadow above themustard ground, azure colouredin for both air and sky.I see she has crayoned in theheaven around her, cloudsa hair’s breath away,the artist herself afloat in blue.This is the world my daughter creates,no lines separate her will from the real;no one has taught her how not to drawor where horizons end and start,what is allowable in dreamsor how her eyes should learnthe gaps between spectrums.The young are colour-blind.All children see rainbowsno matter rain, shine, snow or stormin every pale wing, broken or torn.― Mother of All Questions by Grace Chia

"always that same theory, where my chest swings open like a door, nothing to it, until a rib chips, shards of me firework into you, grazing slick past your skin, one quick meteor shower, a fortissimo soda: this must be the swan song you lusted for. this is your foie gras, your happy meal, your pasar malam cup corn cycled to rendezvous lover waiting at hdb void deck. every eye level on me, I am the parade that will pool at their feet. but there is only one summer in this dream, birthed at the loom, hung by its hips in the living room of the city. for each satellite mistaken for a star we share a cigar; by dusk we can no longer see each other through the smoke."― an excerpt from Hanya Yanagihara Made Me Cry by Ang Kia Yee

"Like many Eurasians, my mother and her siblings wouldalso have simple sandwiches for tea, like cucumber or cheese. And the French loaf they would buy from the Indian bread man would star some days as well, slapped with margarine and brown kaya of dubious origin (that my mother insists they were grateful for). Bubur terigu, a porridge of white wheat sweetened with gula melaka, laced with coconut milk, was also a regular tea timefeature, as in many other Eurasian homes. Bubur means porridge in Malay, and terigu is derived from the Portuguese word trigo, which means wheat. Some days there would be pulut hitam, black glutinous rice porridge, another typical Eurasian tea item. Often there would be some tapioca dish, sometimes grated with coconut and sugar."― 'Others' Is Not A Race by Melissa De Silva

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p/s: Just in time for our Pre - Black Friday Sale which ends this weekend!

º use this code at checkout: MPP40º receive 40% off Math Paper Press titles!º only applicable for purchases from 18 – 19 November